Monica
I’m fine. They’re nice.
Josh
Let me know if you need to be rescued.
Monica
Are you okay?
Josh
My brothers are threatening to feed me.
Monica
You should let them.
So the brothers all piled into Seth’s truck, which wasn’t big enough for five grown men, but Adam squished into the middle of the second row, and they drove up the hill and across town to Mac’s.
“This feels like an intervention,” Josh said dryly after they grabbed their favourite booth at the back of the diner, and put him right in the middle, so there was no chance of escape.
One minute, he’d been in bed, whispering with Monica, and the next her mother was on her way, and his whole family was involved.
And now they’d been separated very deliberately. “What are your wives saying to Monica right now?”
“Probably grilling her for dirt on you,” Owen said with a straight face.
Adam nodded solemnly. “Like, where you are most ticklish.”
“Fuck off.”
Seth shrugged. “Honestly, they probably just want to know what your type is, since you haven’t dated at all.”
And it was a good fucking thing he hadn’t dated, since he’d still been married. “I don’t have a type.”
“Dark hair, nice clothes—” Seth continued.
“We’re not talking about Monica.”
“She’s the most elegant elephant in the room,” Will burst out. “Why aren’t we talking about her?”
“Because she’s off-limits.”
“Why?”
Josh grimaced and grabbed the menu.
Adam snatched it out of his hands, and as the waitress approached, said, “Five coffees, please. And we’ll need a minute to decide.”
Which led to the fastest scurry away ever.
Josh took a deep breath. Held it. Let it out. Arrived at no great new profound understanding about anything, so he shrugged. “I don’t know what to say.”
Owen leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms over his chest. “Try starting at the beginning.”
Was that when he got hired on at Fischer Racing? Or eight years later, when the owner’s daughter tracked him down and asked him for a favour, which he let get so far out of hand, now she was his estranged wife?
